With the passing of Neil Armstrong on Saturday, I thought it would be a good to remember to other pioneers who were the first to achieve the landmark milestones of space exploration.
- First person in space and in orbit – 12th April 1961 – Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1
- First to splashdown after reaching space – 5th May 1961 – Alan Shepard (first American in space) in Freedom 7
- First person to spend more than 24 hours in space – 6th - 7th August 1961 – Gherman Titov in Vostok 2
- First woman in space – 16th June 1963 – Valentina Tereshkova in Vostok 6
- First person to conduct a spacewalk – 18th March 1965 – Alexei Leonov from Voskhod 2
- First persons to spend a week in space – 21st - 29th August 1965 – Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad in Gemini 5
- First space rendezvous – 15th December 1965 – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford between Gemini 7 and Gemina 6A
- First space docking – 16th March 1966 – Neil Armstrong and David Scott between Gemini 8 and an Agena Target Vehicle
- First persons to orbit the moon – 24th - 25th December 1968 – Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell in Apollo 8
- First man on the moon – 20th July 1969 – Neil Armstrong from Apollo 11
- First persons to spend four weeks in space – 25th May – 22nd June 1973 – Pete Conrad, Joseph Kerwin and Paul Weitz in Skylab 2
- First American woman in space – June 18th 1983 – Sally Ride in Space Shuttle Challenger
- First untethered spacewalk – 7th February 1984 – Bruce McCandless from Space Shuttle Challenger
- Persons in space for a year in space – 21st December 1987 – 1988 – Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov on the space station Mir
If you think any important firsts are missing let me know and I can add them. Images from NASA.gov.
Those images were so cool! Thanks, really helped me on my project.
Thank you very much for helping me refresh my long-lost memory from learning about historic space feats in school and TV. I would like for you to please also add the following facts: the first living thing to venture out into space which was a Soviet female dog named Laika riding aboard Sputnik 2, and also the only space walk ever accomplished outside of Low Earth Orbit, which occured aftr a repair was needed on the trip home from the moon to the Earth on the return vehicle used after the main lunar mission was completed in one of America’s several manned lunnar expeditions under the Apollo space program’s supervision in NASA several main histroric programs.
as we saw in the 2nd last pic that the man is on the moon and the flag of the united states of america is some what waving. since there is no gravity on the moon how the man can be standing there and we’ve also read that there is no atmosphere on moon so how can the flag be waving and how is flag attached to the moon ?????
Hi Dev, interestingly there is gravity on the Moon it is just 1/10 that of the Earth’s not zero gravity as you claim (this would change the fundamental laws of physics if a body the size and mass of the Moon had no gravity), the flag is not actually waving it has a metal tube holding it in position so it doesn’t look limp (this is actually visible in the image).
I’m answering to DEV who apparently doesn’t know that because there is no atmosphere on the moon that there is less air resistance so the flag flaps.
From:
An eleven year old boy named Jake who is in 5th grade